“”Astral trips? I call them half-asstral trips — if they're made, then I would like to see some evidence of them. These people use their imaginations, and people who believe them use their gullibility in order to accept it.

An out-of-body experience (OBE) is a moment or period during which a person feels detached from, or outside of, their body. Such feelings can be imagined or hallucinated effects brought on through meditation, drugs, or dreaming. OBEs have been claimed by many people, and tend to attract paranormal explanations rather than naturalistic ones, even though scientific research into the phenomenon is continuing to generate more answers than any paranormal investigator would.

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Astral projection, in which a person's soul or spirit purportedly travels outside their body or even to a different plane of existence, and remains attached to their body only through an imagined "silver cord". As seen in Dungeons & Dragons!

Research into OBE has shown that it can be induced by various physiological, psychological and experimental conditions. The easiest way to induce it is through oxygen deprivation — kids, don't try this at home — and this method is probably related to "meditation" techniques that create a state of hypoventilation. It is also experienced after stimulation of the temporal and parietal lobes in the brain. Transcranial magnetic stimulation or localized epileptic seizures in these regions creates various kinds of OBE and "shadow person" perceptions.

Work in brain imaging has shown that these particular anatomical regions are activated during the experiences.[4] These regions are related to our proprioception, and the disruption of this sense is what is causing the OBE. All this suggests that OBEs are all just inside the person's head. Other research, though, is slated to examine if there is any truth to the claim that people "leave their bodies" after cardiac arrest in hospitals. This experiment is fairly obvious in its methodology, working by placing pictures in places that only someone on an out-of-body trip would be able to see, although how they intend to keep these things from interference is anyone's guess.[5]